15. Menu Controls

Menus are a major interface control as they allow the user to make choice and control the application.

Menu may or may not be visible until some event is triggered by the user such as right clicking the mouse or clicking on a drop down menu.

The menu styles below are some of the possibilities

Hierarchy / Pull down menu

This has a single element visible, then clicking on that element causes a sub-menu to appear. Clicking on a sub-menu item may then make a sub-sub-menu to appear. This is called a hierarchical menu.

typical menu

Menus can be horizontal as above or the top level could be vertical. vertical menuNote the menus do not have to text based - it is perfectly fine to use graphical icons as well

 

 

 

 

Context or 'pop-up' Menu

A context menu shows a different list of choices depending on which icon or item was selected to trigger it i.e. the context of the event.context menu example


For instance right clicking on a folder name may offer actions such as 'New..' 'Compress', Delete whilst clicking on an icon may show a list of tool icons.

 

 

Full Screen

The interface may consist entirely of a menu with no other interface element.Typical full screen menu For instance an ATM machine uses a full screen menu

 

 

 

 

 

 

challenge see if you can find out one extra fact on this topic that we haven't already told you

Click on this link: designing menus